The Late Show with Stephen Colbert quickly mocked Donald Trump for incorrectly naming his former White House physician while bragging about his performance on a cognitive screening test meant to detect mild cognitive impairment or early dementia.
During a campaign event in Milwaukee, ahead of his upcoming debate on CNN with President Joe Biden, Trump insisted that Biden should take a cognitive test like the one he claimed to have aced.
Trump said:
"I took a cognitive test, and I aced it. Doc Ronny — Doc Ronny Johnson. Does everyone know Ronny Johnson, congressman from Texas? He was the White House doctor.”
Trump's latest verbal flub was a reference to Texas Republican U.S. Representative Ronny Jackson, who was the top White House physician for Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama.
The Late Show later mocked Trump's error in a parody video set to the upbeat melody of The Ting Tings’ iconic song "That’s Not My Name" that showcased several of the former president’s verbal slip-ups, including the time he referred to Obama as "Obamna" and his ex-national security adviser John Bolton as "Mark Bolton."
The song begins:
"He nailed his job/and then his first name/then things went south/oh, what a shame"
"[Ronny Johnson] That's not his name/That's not his name/That's a bad brain."
"He said that Joe's flawed/then made this faux pas/It's not the first time/He's botched a name."
You can watch the parody in the video below.
That's Not His Nameyoutu.be
The video quickly went viral—and people ate it up.
Others were more pointed in their criticism of the former president.
Trump has previously been criticized for bragging about acing an intelligence test that was actually just an assessment to check for cognitive impairment and at one point declared he'd taken the test to prove he is more intelligent than “radical left maniacs.”
In fact, the "intelligence test" Trump bragged about was actually a Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a widely used screening assessment for detecting cognitive impairment.
MoCA was designed to assess different cognitive domains, including attention and concentration, executive functions, memory, language, visuoconstructional skills, conceptual thinking, calculations, and orientation.
The assessment's questions are simple and ask test subjects to demonstrate if they can remember five words. Critics have stressed that it is unimpressive that Trump can remember five words—namely “person, woman, man, camera, TV”—as he demonstrated at one point on live television. Trump, however, seems to think it is the height of cognitive brilliance.
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